Wesley shivered at the cold tone of Søren’s voice.

“What did you do?”

“Let’s just say I made certain he could never father children again.”

Wesley’s stomach plummeted through the floor.

“But...you’re a Jesuit. Nora said you’re a pacifist.”

“I was eighteen when I castrated my father. Not a Jesuit yet. I was halfway to Europe by the time he woke. He assumed my sister Elizabeth had done it although he could prove nothing.”

Søren smiled and it was the most chilling smile Wesley had ever seen in his life.

“You look horrified,” Søren said.

“I am horrified.”

“I told that same story to Eleanor the night of my father’s funeral. She wasn’t horrified. She was proud of me.”

“No...Nora wouldn’t...”

“Eleanor can be a bit barbaric herself. One of her more attractive traits. One of millions.”

One of millions... The words reminded Wesley of what he’d come to say, but he couldn’t quite say it yet.

“I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side,” Wesley admitted.

“You couldn’t if you tried.”

“That’s good to know.”

Søren took a sip of his wine and turned on the piano bench so that he and Wesley sat facing each other.

“Telling Eleanor about my father, what he did to my sister, what I did to him in return, that wasn’t all I told Eleanor that night. I asked first if she was certain she wanted to know the entire truth about me. I warned her it would change how she saw me, how she saw us, possibly even how she saw the world. I’d long suspected Eleanor was of our ilk. The first time I met her she had self-inflicted burns on her arms. Teenagers inflict harm on themselves for only two reasons—either they’re in pain or they love pain. Eleanor was of the latter variety.”

“So you told her what you are?”

“I did. I told her all my secrets that night, all the ones that mattered. I told her I was a sadist who could only become aroused by inflicting pain, mental or physical, on another person, and if we were to be lovers someday, I would hurt her. I would have to. I told it all to her, and I did not spare her the gruesome details. When she was fifteen she made it abundantly clear she desired me. When she was sixteen she made it even more abundantly clear that she was in love with me and she knew, despite my best efforts to hide my feelings, that I was in love with her, too. I dropped all pretense, all subterfuge, and I laid out all the dark, stark truth before her.”

“What did she do?”

“She said the three most beautiful words I’d ever heard in my life.”

“I love you?” Wesley guessed.

Søren emptied his wineglass with one swallow and sat it back on top of the piano.

“‘Is that all?’” Søren said the words so casually Wesley wasn’t sure he’d even heard him right.

“What?”

“That’s what Eleanor said to me when I told her the sort of horrific stories that would send anyone else running for their life. She said, ‘Is that all?’ I didn’t even know how to answer at first. I’m not sure I remember what I said. But I do remember her laughing, and breathing a sigh of relief. She said she’d been worried something was actually wrong with me. Perhaps terminal cancer or that I was a serial killer. Or even worse, she said, I could be impotent.”

Wesley laughed. He couldn’t stop himself. So Nora.

“Sounds just like her.”

“That seventeen-year-old girl was braver than I was that night. I’d been anticipating shock and disgust from her, and I prayed with time she would understand and accept or at least forgive me for being what I was. Telling her the truth seemed like the greatest of risks, and yet I loved her too much to keep her in the dark any longer. I’d feared she would spurn me. Instead, she said she belonged to me and knew she belonged to me from the moment we met, and her body was mine to do with what I wanted. She loved me. She trusted me. She knew I wouldn’t hurt her even if I hurt her. And we kissed for the first time, and I felt something I never dreamed I’d feel.”

“Happy?”

“Normal. I felt normal. I’d felt loved in the past, and I’d certainly felt happy. But never normal. She so readily accepted everything about me that I’d worried she would fear or despise, I felt almost foolish. When Kingsley and I were teenagers at school, we often congratulated ourselves on what beautiful freaks we were. Typical teenagers thinking we were so different from the rest of the world. We were two lost souls who’d found each other in a wasteland. But with Eleanor, I didn’t feel lost anymore. She simply saw nothing wrong at all with what I was. I might as well have told her that I had a bad habit of drumming my fingers on the desk, and I would have gotten the same reaction. The same patronizing, ‘Is that all?’ My God, I thought I loved her before that. After...you have no idea.”

“I think I do have an idea.”

“Yes...” he said, resting his elbow on the piano fallboard. “Of course you do. I apologize. I’ve loved Eleanor as long as you’ve been alive but it’s wrong of me to dismiss your feelings for her simply because they’re younger than mine.”

Wesley winced at the words, visibly. Søren clearly noticed because the priest laughed at him.

“Do I even want to know what that expression was indicative of?” Søren asked.